• What are Professional Learning Communities?

    A Professional Learning Community is an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.  Professional Learning Communities operate under the assumptions that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for the educators.  (Learning by Doing, pg. 11)

    The Big Idea that Drives the Work of a PLC
    The essence of the PLC process is captured in three big ideas...
     
    1)  The purpose of our school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels.
    2)   Helping all students learn requires a collaborative and collective effort
    3)  To assess our effectiveness in helping all students learn we must focus on results-evidence of student learning-and use results to inform and improve our professional practice and respond to students who need intervention or enrichment.   (Learning by Doing, pg. 14)
     
    The work of the PLC is focused around four questions:
    1)  What knowledge and skills should every student acquire as a result of this unit of instruction?
    2)  How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills?
    3)  How will we respond when some students do mot learn?
    4)  How will we extend and enrich the learning for students who are already proficient?  (Learning by Doing. pg. 28)